Sandy Hook Tragedy: Lightworkers, Why the Bypass?!

There seems to be this belief floating around the “spiritual” community that feeling any emotion other than happiness and joy is somehow “wrong.”

It’s as if we’ve taken the Law of Attraction to be another kind of All Knowing, Judging God. Only now the sin is any emotion outside the realm of Pollyanna thinking and over-stretching optimism. While I certainly feel that joy is our most natural state, bypassing pain is not the way to get there. Remember the age-old adage: “what you resist persists.” Yet it seems after all we’ve learned through understanding how the Universe works, the message we have bought into is this: Ignore pain. Ignore suffering. Just be happy.

I noticed this heavily after the shooting in Sandy Hook Elementary. My normally very vocal and active spiritual community online was surprisingly silent. Only a few people (I noticed) said anything at all. The same people who make an online ruckus over a moon cycles and how important love is, were barely able to give a nod to the atrocity of the events on Friday.

I even noticed this struggle in my own heart. My first response was “turn it off. Don’t give it any energy.” It was as if we are afraid that to look at the suffering of those in Connecticut, because to look at it means we are choosing it to be our reality.

The concept of “we are all one” seems to go out the window when those aspects of us that are in incredible pain take a more public platform. It’s like we all wanted to pretend that that atrocity was caused by someone else’s low vibration, not ours, and to acknowledge it at all is to give it a presence in our lives that may perhaps reveal our own shadows. Or perhaps it makes us look “unspiritual,” because, after all, the truly enlightened have no emotional reaction to anything because they “know” the higher reality. Right?

This is why I disagree:

You can never truly heal if you don’t go THROUGH the emotion – bypassing is not healing. And healing is not the same as ignoring. Choosing to focus on sending love to those who are suffering is not the same as focusing on the atrocity.

Focusing on pain or tragedy seems to strike fear in the heart of many light workers, dreading that “terrible” event of a “lowered vibration.” And to be fair, it is certainly easy to get pulled into the drama of tragic events if we’re not careful to stay present to our hearts while facing the pain.

But it is possible to face pain and hold a space of love while keeping your vibration high. It’s called transmutation. And it the foundation of all healing. In fact, it’s the foundation of our light-work, is it not?

True healing is not bypassing the pain, it’s going right into it with love and compassion. This step can’t be skipped. It’s impossible to heal without it.

Holding a space of love for the suffering of others and our own “shadows,” is not the same as ignoring suffering all together. Like it or not, pain DOES still exist in this world. There is still a shadow…and that shadow will grow bigger if it is not faced in love, validated, and healed.

If life has taught me anything, it is that ignoring a problem does not make it go away. Grief is necessary for true healing. In fact, grief can be a truly liberating and freeing emotion.

After my mom died, I didn’t grieve for years – I just simply didn’t know how. But pretending I was okay didn’t work. No matter how hard I tried to be happy, somewhere deep inside me desperately ached, and by not giving that pain validation, it grew.

We are all called to walk that delicate line between acceptance/surrender and resistance/despair. Bypassing the work of healing all together is the root of suffering . If we refuse to face our shadow, it will find a way to get our attention – and the more we ignore it, the bigger it gets.

Just look at the man who instigated the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary – he was clearly suffering from unhealed aspects of his own shadow. And I’ll be bold enough to say that by ignoring the suffering of these people (who are other aspects of ourselves), we are perpetuating the same problem that caused these deaths to begin with.

What happened in Connecticut is not a reflection of somebody else “out there”; it’s a reflection of ALL OF US, because we are not separate from these people. Whether we choose to look at it or not, the suffering of the families in Connecticut (and around the world) affect us. It is our suffering. And these sufferings will continue to affect us until we embrace true healing. If someone else is hurting, we all are hurting. There is no way around it.

It strikes me as odd that the very people claiming love is the only answer, are unsure of what to do when people are in need of it. By choosing to ignore the pain and suffering of those in Connecticut, we are choosing to ignore our own shadow.

And I don’t just mean the “victims’’” pain, but also the man who inflicted it. Yes, he too is a reflection of all of us, and we have to face this. Hating him will not heal anyone, anymore than ignoring him will make him go away.

It’s time to come to terms with who and what we truly are. We must embrace all aspects of ourselves. We are not in this alone. We are not separate from those people suffering in Connecticut or Darfur or Iraq. It may seem far removed from us, but it’s still there, and it is desperate for validation, love, and healing.

I cannot speak for the majority of light workers, this is just what I experienced on Friday: near silence, a few nods of acknowledgement, and several philosophical, New Age babble about how it is all meant to be – how these kids created their reality and in some “higher perspective” out there it’s all good. And that’s all fine and well, but the fact of the matter still exist: these people are hurting. Like it or not, that is our global reality.

I know all of my fellow light workers are powerful healers, with deep empathic abilities and loving intentions for the transformation of this world. So where was the love on Friday? Why aren’t we bonding together to meditate and send healing to these people? I’m still trying to figure that one out.

I once posted a blog on Chakra Center about hugging trees and to-date it’s had more views, feedback and shares than any other article I’ve posted on this site, even more than my call out for a meditation of love for the people in the Sandy Hook Elementary school tragedy.

Light workers! What’s with the silence? It is in times like these when your love and powerful abilities are needed most. It is in deep suffering that people need to know they are not alone. In order for pain to heal, it must first be validated, then we must do our best to surround them with the love within us.

We should never let a problem to be solved, a fear of “low vibration,” or any “New Age” belief become more important than a person to be loved.

14 thoughts on “Sandy Hook Tragedy: Lightworkers, Why the Bypass?!”

A brave truth is stated here. For the past few days, I have tried to put this tragedy out of my mind in hopes that I would not send and further sadness their way and over the past few days I have noticed myself slip into my own deep sadness for unknown reasons, until now. The emotions of others effect me very deeply and until now, I didn’t know it could reach so far, for many many miles. Although I urged others in my close proximity to send love to these suffering people I had not done it myself, until now. Thanks for the reminder that I do indeed have a heart and that I should use it, Amanda Flaker, you’re a true gem girl. <3

I really agree, but honestly, I was suffering so greatly before this event that I was incapacitated and unable to respond to additional suffering, I know there are many of us experiencing this at the moment, if we can see that suffering so clearly in the physical world, then I KNOW people are suffering inside I have to wonder if that is why so many were “silent”. I actually wasn’t on my partners status but I still wasn’t able to share how

I felt about it, children passing is something I have struggled with personally in my own life so this was a bit hard for me to process. I often find that I think I can’t access those vibrations in times like this… thanks for posting this :)

I agree with you also. The point of this post is to not make anyone feel guilty, but rather to start a conversation about the balance and flow of giving love and healing, and not feeding into negativity. It’s something we’re all learning. :)

Thank-you for discussing this and for opening a forum in which we can all share our hearts.
For me, in the beginning, I was in a state of shock. I still am, to some degree. It’s something that is hard for me to comprehend on any level. Luckily, I had already been praying all day before I found out so my first inclination was to pray. I prayed for the precious lives lost…I prayed for those who were left behind and those grieving. I prayed for everyone involved, including myself. I prayed for healing and for wisdom…I prayed for the one responsible for the lives lost. I asked for healing, there, too.
I do believe it’s important not to get so lost in the pain and darkness that we forget we can reach out in prayer and ask for healing. I didn’t think I would be helping anyone if I lost myself to blind rage or sadness. I did post something about owning your pain and accepting it’s presence but being willing to step aside from judgments and be a conduit for healing. I find myself wondering if that was the best words I could share. That may have been what worked for me, in that situation but I know that everyone deals with grief and pain in their own way. I watched my father struggle to remain composed because he was so angry about all of it and my mother needed to speak about the horror she felt to process what was happening. I felt intuitive guidance not to “judge them because I think it might hinder my way of healing” but instead to hold a space of non judgement and then continue to focus on what I felt guided to do.
For me personally, I was able to shed silent tears while I watched the prayer vigil that was held last night. I placed my hand on my heart, a sacred place, and sent any and all the love I had to everyone.
We’re all dealing with it differently…I can’t personally say I know the right way to deal except that whenever I come from a place of love and compassion for all of us, I feel like I’m focusing on what matters most. I have been doing more praying and holding of a sacred place than I have been speaking. But that’s another reason why I chose to post this so that I could share my heart on the matter.
I do agree with you that healing happens if one is willing to face, with love, that which ails them. And I do pray, for us all, those directly connected to the shooting and the tragedies that happen all over the world everyday, that we will truly heal. Thank-you, again, for speaking about this. It was healing for me to read a post like this that cuts right to the core truth ~ face the suffering and hold space for it. Don’t try to bypass it or ask others to. Because love is what truly heals.
Take care, Amanda and much love to you

I totally relate to what you are saying. I feel so similiar. It’s hard to know what to do. Holding a space of love, as you are , is really all you can do. That is beautiful. There is no “right” or wrong way to deal with these things…I was just particularly struck by the “seeming” silence on how we, as lightwokers, can hold a space of love while not being afraid to feel. Thanks for your thoughts. Much love to you.

First, a disclaimer: I make no claims of being a lightworker. I have, however, noticed that many people (lightworker or not) have tried to push this tragedy away and into a corner, choosing not to look it in the face. I think that there are many reasons why this could be.

First, as a parent, friend, family member or just at the human level, are we all not silently thanking God that this tragedy did not befall us or our loved ones? How many times have you seen posts on Facebook or hear reporters on the news saying that “we are all going to be hugging our children a little tighter..’? We are horrified by what happened, but so thankful that it didn’t happen to US but to someone else. Of course we don’t wish this kind of thing on anyone, but the feelings of guilt because we are relieved that it didn’t happen to us are not easy to deal with- or to even admit. Dealing with feelings of guilt can certainly cause us to be silent with words or actions of any sort.

Second, every time that one of these tragedies takes place, I cannot help but think of the family and friends of the person responsible. Were there clues or were they blindsided? How severe do someone’s issues have to be to make them snap? Could someone I know or love or am related to snap in a similar fashion? We want to put the shooter in a box and keep ourselves far removed from them, after all, they are “crazy” or “evil”, but the truth of the matter is, there is nothing that makes us so special that we are exempt from knowing personally, someone who falls apart. Just as we all have the capacity for living in light, we also have the capacity for dwelling in darkness. If most of us are honest, we have all gone through dark periods in our lives where we have thought “crazy” thoughts, contemplated harmful actions (even towards ourselves) or hung on to our sanity by our fingertips. The human spirit is resilient but not infallible. We need to face, head on, the reality that we all are capable of “snapping”, which is why it is so vital that those with a higher knowledge of spirit and deeper understanding of lightness and greater capacity to exhibit love do just that.
God puts discomfort in our hearts so that we are moved to take action, not so that we hide, so love freely, love deeply, love honestly, love through grief, in spite of grief and because of grief. Love, too, those that are unlovable by societies standards. We have to love for those that are too weak, angry, or hurt to love. We have to carry their burdens for them, painful as it may be, until a time at which they feel strong enough to move forward on their own in a way that is healthy. That is the only hope for humanity.

Sorry for hijacking your post~ I guess I had a lot to say on this subject!
Peace, love & healing~

“Teal, I want to hear what you have to say regarding the school shooting that happened today in Connecticut. I’m desperate to make sense of this seeing as how these shootings have
been increasing and a man in China stabbed 22 children on the exact same day! Should we outlaw guns? Help me make sense of this!”

Teal’s Response:

“This message may be difficult to hear for some of you who read it. But my intention is to cut through the illusions that are causing you to feel fear. I wish to level with you and tell you that there are some things that happen that are too difficult to bear. Despite the fact that there is always a higher purpose for them happening, we do not always see the purpose right away. The pain impacts us, (especially those who are close to the event) on a level where there is nothing left to do but to keep breathing. We suffer when we try to bear the unbearable. In truth, instead of try to “bear it” (which is a glamourized word for resist it) all there is to do is to let the pain of such an event sink deep into our hearts. When we let the pain sink into our hearts, we do not do it so that the pain will make us cold and harder. We do it so that we can let the pain make our hearts softer and warmer so that we may transform the grief into compassion. We consciously surrender to it by letting it soften our hearts like clay. With this compassion, comes the understanding that you seek.

We must all come to understand that when a person feels as if they are powerless, the natural progression is for them to gain their power back. We call the first stage of this journey the revenge phase. Emotionally, revenge feels better than powerlessness does. In fact, what most people do not want to hear is that revenge is a higher vibration than powerlessness. And so, in a subconscious desperate way, the people who hurt other people are taking an action step to try to find alignment with themselves and to feel better by taking their own power back. The only reason anyone hurts another person is because they, themselves are suffering. We are all the victims of victims. There are frightened, powerless people on both sides of the gun, which is why the perpetrator and the victim are a perfect vibrational match to each other.

We must also realize that events like this are a wake up call. And it is a wake up call that we often miss. The wake up call is that we are all culpable for crimes such as this. Though there are positive aspects of this human society, there are also aspects of this society that force people into a state of powerlessness. We create the very monsters we condemn… most especially the current school system. This society does not prioritize teaching individuals to stay in alignment with themselves and with their own joy. It teaches conformity. It teaches people to ignore their own internal calling in favor of authority and in favor of what other people think is best. That is a recipe for a rebellion. It is a recipe for disaster. We will keep learning that lesson the hard way until we stop running our society in this way. Do I think that “gun control” is a good idea? In one respect, yes I do. If it were difficult to get them, it would permit more time for the powerful emotions that inspire such actions to settle. It would grant more time for a person’s higher mind to regain control before they act out from a space of intense negative emotion. It is time to be honest about the fact that guns were not created for a positive purpose in the first place. They are a tool of destruction. They are a “tool of fear”. The sooner humanity can let go of fear and the tools that go along with that fear, the better. But, will getting rid of guns make the violence go away? No, because getting rid of guns is a surface level measure. Getting rid of guns does not address the real problem. The real problem is that individuals get to the point where they are feeling desperate and powerless.

I personally grew up with a man whom lived his life at the mercy of his own fear. In fact I lived at his mercy most of my life as his “victim” and I realized something very, very important. I learned that we cannot eradicate crime from this society by requiring unstable people to take psychiatric medication, by increasing our laws or by locking “perpetrators” away in jail cells. The only way we will eradicate crime of any nature is when suffering is gone from the hearts and lives of these people who we call “perpetrators”. What’s more is that we will only cease to experience crime, if we cease to create suffering in the hearts of the children who are born to us, only to grow from that suffering into perpetrators. Those who choose to kill other people, are separated acutely from their own internal being. These people are not born. They are made. They are made by all of us. They are made by our society and the way that most of us currently live our lives.

It is suffering which creates serial killers. It is suffering which creates mass shooters. It is suffering which creates terrorists. And until our human society stops perpetuating suffering in the multitude of ways that it perpetuates suffering, we will always have murders, mass shootings and terrorism.

It is understandable that when we are suffering greatly, it does not feel good to remember that we create our own reality. And when we are caught up in the wake of a painful event, it does not feel good to remember that “victims “ also create the experiences that they encounter. No one can “impose” themselves on anyone else’s reality. A murder is a co-creation; it is created by both the victim and the perpetrator. It is a creation even if someone who is just a child is the one who creates it. This society is currently one that reinforces the idea of powerlessness. In my personal opinion, if we want children to stop creating situations in which they become victims, we had better stop teaching them to think and feel powerless.

While the collection of human consciousness is spinning in the shock and confusion of these events, the energy of well being (the source from which all people come forth) dominates. We have the choice to let these events cause us to focus on what we do not want (thus feeding energy to the problem and also reinforcing powerlessness inside our own hearts); or we have the choice to focus on what we want (thus feeding energy to the solution and fueling love in our own hearts). Whichever direction we choose to focus in, the ripples of that choice will move outwards and effect the rest of the world.

Society is the sum of its smallest parts! Its smallest parts are individuals. We must let go of the suffering and transform the suffering inside ourselves if we want to create a society, which reflects joy and compassion and peace. While you do not have control over the actions of those who walk into schools and shoot people, you do have control over yourself. And if you make it a priority to stay in alignment with yourself and with what makes you happy, you will never be so disconnected that you will cause other people pain. You can check yourself off the list of names of those who contribute to the suffering on this planet, and you can add your name to the list of people who contribute to the wellness of this planet.”

Yes…I saw this on Facebook and I love the points she brings up. What it doesn’t address, however, is Spiritual bypass (which she has addressed in other videos she has done — how ignoring emotion isn’t healing it). What I am trying to address in this post is more to do with her point of “what can we do.” Despite the horror of what happened, there are SO MANY beautiful acts of kindness going on right to help these people, or just people doing random acts of kindness because this event inspired them to know more of what they do want. I would love to see the lightworker community come together to create more of what we “do” want, while at the same time not being afraid to feel and transmute the pain. Feeling the sadness and grief of those mourning is what can inspire more love. By ignoring it all together I think we miss a beautiful opportunity for expansion.